When planning a wedding, it's important to many couples that they acknowledge and represent their identity, values, faith and cultures within the celebrations. We spoke to newly-wed Nitara, all about her experience planning her wedding as a British born Indian and how she incorporated traditions and rituals from both India and England into her wedding day...
Hi, I’m Nitara, an analyst working at NHS England. As part of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce, a colleague recently asked me for ideas for awareness raising, starting with cultural events. To create a space where diversity is actively celebrated sounded like a great idea to me and so I have chosen to speak about my recent multicultural wedding. After all, weddings are about celebrating love and love comes in a wonderful variety of beautiful colours, shapes and sizes.
There are many ways couples from different cultural backgrounds can choose to celebrate their union. For my husband Binay and I, even though we are both from Indian backgrounds, for us, it made sense to have two separate weddings in order to do justice to each.
Being born and raised in the UK but having come from an Indian cultural background, we quickly decided that we wanted to celebrate with two weddings – an intimate English civil ceremony, as well as a traditional Kerala wedding, and it was really exciting to plan both!
The customs are so vastly different and beautiful that we decided not to merge them together, but this is by no means the only way to do it. Often, I’ve seen couples hold both weddings on the same day, one after the other, or even fuse different elements of their cultures into a unique ceremony of their own.
The decision may depend on logistics including time, cost, wedding venue and who will officiate the ceremony. For example, you may choose to have a faith leader officiate or an independent wedding celebrant. It has to work for you and for your partner!
There are so many fun and creative ways to incorporate details from each side. Read on to hear more about what I learnt from planning not one, but two different cultural celebrations.
Rituals:
From the father walking the bride down the aisle, the exchange of vows between the couple followed by cake and bubbly were some of the British traditions we embraced for our civil ceremony.
Many cultural weddings, especially Indian weddings, involve a lot of rituals unfamiliar to those outside of the culture. For example, the bride’s aunty leads the bridal entrance followed by 8 bridesmaids, the bride and her parents. The ceremony begins with the bride and bridesmaids going round the Mandap (stage) 3 times, each holding an oil lamp.
As a child, both Binay and I had been exposed to cultural events and so the cultural significance of some of the celebrations wasn’t new to us. Nevertheless, it’s always good to explain what is happening in each stage of the ceremony so that none of the guests feel left out and can appreciate the symbolism.
One of the things I most enjoyed planning was ‘our guide to what’s going on!’. This helped our guests who may not have been exposed to a wedding like ours, understand the and appreciate the meaning and importance of the different rituals and activities within the ceremony and throughout the day.
Food and decor:
Food is such a great way for couples to celebrate their heritage. We decided to present a fusion of different cuisines at our wedding. Presenting a fusion of food is a great way to make guests feel comfortable with familiar tastes as well as explore a new cuisine.
From fish and chips canapes and prosecco to a traditional dosa stand and colourful decorative elements that fitted our culture were some of the ways we found to combine the best of our British and Indian cultures for our big day.
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Music:
The wedding reception is a great time to break out top hits but also incorporate traditional wedding dances or music into the mix. For example, we found the combination of live dhol (drum) players and violin for the couple’s entrance was enjoyed by our guests.
We debated a lot whether to have an Indian or English song for our first dance but were inspired by our first dance tutor’s words to choose a song that meant something to both of us. And so, we went for two our favourites - ‘Tere bin’ from the Bollywood movie ‘Simmba’ for our first dance followed by Ed Sheeran – ‘Perfect’ for the couple’s dance.
Don't forget your own style!
If I were to give one tip for couples wishing to plan a multicultural wedding, it's don’t forget your own style, stay true to you.
Honouring your families’ cultures is great but don’t forget to showcase your own personalities. For example, I love all things lace, romantic, and elegant, and I incorporated all those different elements into our civil ceremony. For the Indian wedding, we stuck to traditionally brighter colours.
Nitara's story is a 3 part series. If you want to know more, check out these publications.
- 10 weird and wonderful facts about Kerala weddings
- Multicultural wedding planning tips (coming soon)